


Like the Red of Weirwood Leaves Against the Snow

by Goodforthesoul



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Healing, POV Sansa, Past Sexual Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-13
Updated: 2017-08-13
Packaged: 2018-12-14 22:47:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11793084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Goodforthesoul/pseuds/Goodforthesoul
Summary: The first time she walks past the door to that room, Jon Snow is beside her. They have retaken Winterfell, their home. But it is no longer simply a place of happy childhood memories, not anymore (and for Jon Snow, it probably never was happy or simple, not as the bastard son of Eddard Stark).When she sees the door to that room, she stumbles, suddenly gripped by fear and dread. Nausea fills her stomach, and her hands, though she has them gripped into tight fists, start to tremble. She knows that she is walking now, not as the proud Stark returned to her ancestral home, but as she did when the Flayed Man, not the Direwolf, was raised above the castle, her head bent, her steps short, refusing to look any man in the eye (especially that man who had been made her husband, and whose shallow pale eyes belied the depths of his cruelty).





	Like the Red of Weirwood Leaves Against the Snow

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first Jonsa fic, and my first time posting on AO3. But I this story would not leave me alone and get back to work until I wrote it down, so here it is.

The first time she walks past the door to that room, Jon Snow is beside her. They have retaken Winterfell, their home. But it is no longer simply a place of happy childhood memories, not anymore (and for Jon Snow, it probably never was happy or simple, not as the bastard son of Eddard Stark).

When she sees the door to that room, she stumbles, suddenly gripped by fear and dread. Nausea fills her stomach, and her hands, though she has them gripped into tight fists, start to tremble. She knows that she is walking now, not as the proud Stark returned to her ancestral home, but as she did when the Flayed Man, not the Direwolf, was raised above the castle, her head bent, her steps short, refusing to look any man in the eye (especially that man who had been made her husband, and whose shallow pale eyes belied the depths of his cruelty).

And Jon must see how this room has affected her, because he lightly, gently (Jon is always light and gentle and kind with her; she has seen him kill men, but he has never tried to make her afraid) touches her arm. She shudders away from him, the thought of any man, even Jon (light and gentle and kind Jon) filling her with fear and revulsion and dread. Because she will never be made to feel the way that she has in that room, she is determined (and if that means never again being touched by a man so be it). “Please,” she whispers to Jon, and she is ashamed by the quaver in her voice; she had wanted it to come out as steely and strong, but instead it is a weak, pitiful rasp, begging not commanding.

She is ashamed that Ramsey can still make her feel this way, that merely the door to that room can make her feel like she did before. She wants to ask Jon to have the carpenters nail boards over the door so that she never has to look at it again (or give her a hammer, wood, and nails and she will do it herself), or better yet, have the stonemasons erect a wall in front of it so that she can pretend that the door and the room and Ramsey and all of the horrible things that happened in there never existed in the first place.

But she cannot do that because she knows that there is a piece of her still left in that room and if she pretends that it doesn’t exist, she’ll never get it back.

So as hard as it is so see Jon looking at her that way, his kind and gentle grey eyes filled with sympathy and something like understanding, she knows the door must stay. He does not ask her what Ramsey did to her in that room (Jon is a good man, so he cannot imagine the things that Ramsey did to her, but he too has seen the cruelty and horror in the world and he knows the kinds of pain that women endure at the hands of evil men; he suspects enough even if he cannot know it all). “He cannot hurt you anymore,” he says, attempting to reassure her. But he’s wrong. All the things Ramsey had done to her, they still hurt.

* * *

 Then Jon is gone to meet the Dragon Queen and Bran has returned, expect that it is not Bran, not really. He has Bran’s face and speaks with Bran’s voice, but the things that he says are not Bran’s words. She remembers her sweet younger brother would listen breathlessly to Old Nan’s tales and then scamper around the castle playing out his own adventures. Bran had always dreamed of becoming a knight, but like her, he seems to have come to realize that true knights, like rat cooks and ice dragons and last heroes, are the stuff of story and legend and aren’t real anymore (if they ever were). She sees nothing of that boy in the cold flat eyes of the man he has grown into.

They sit beneath the weirwood together and she tries to understand what Bran has become. But he only tells her that it is difficult to explain and gives her vague half answers (and she wants to tell him that maybe it would not be so difficult if he actually answered her questions, but she doesn’t and she feels the gulf widening a bit more between them). And then he tells her that he knows what happened to her, what Ramsey did to her, and that he is sorry it happened to her and happened here.

And then he tells her that she looked beautiful and that is too much for her take. Because it was beautiful, that night in the godswood, as Theon walked her down a row of twinkling lanterns and Northern Lords. The wood was white, expect for the blood red of the weirwood. And her dress was white, her skin pale, her auburn hair like the red of the weirwood leaves (or blood) against the snow. She looked lovely. But all her loveliness could not protect her from the monster she had married (and there would be no white knights rushing in to save her from his clutches). He had demanded her honesty as he had lied to her with the gentleness of his touch (that was the only time he would touch her gently). Then he had ripped open her dress and ripped open her body and the blood of her maidenhood against the white of her wedding dress was like the red of the weirwood leaves against the white snow of the godswood.

As she walks through the castle, she doesn’t look at the door, but it looms after her, reminding her of snow and blood and a gentle, lying hand on her cheek and the red leaves of the weirwood. 

* * *

 

Sansa is happier than she could have imagined when she sees her little sister again. When they were children, they would quarrel: Arya would noisily rebel against embroidery and sitting quietly, and Sansa would chide her, remonstrating her for not being a lady (which Arya never wanted to be in the first place). But Arya is home again and they are no longer children. Sansa is happy that she is not a lady, because she has become something much more powerful, much more dangerous, and Sansa is glad because she knows the way a man can hurt, can break, a lady, and she believes that Arya would never let that happen to her (not like Sansa, who had been a lady and had let Joffery and then Ramsey hurt her).

She and Arya had gone South together and now they are back home and they are so different (not so different as Bran, but still the women they have become are different from the girls they were) but they are still sisters. And Sansa is glad to have her sister home, even if the roughness that Arya has always had about her has turned hard and cold. Arya has killed, Sansa knows this without Arya having to tell her, and it has changed her (and Sansa has killed too, in her own way, and it has changed her as well). But they are still sisters, and they go into the crypts of Winterfell and mourn their father and sit with Bran and even tease each other (although it is different from their teasing in the past because this time it is not meant to sting; they have both been hurt too much already).

And with Arya back, Sansa has the strength to stop outside the door to that room. She steels herself and puts her hand on the door, bracing herself to enter, to face that place in which she ripped apart by a monster, so that each step hurt because of the bruising on her thighs and the searing pain that pulse through her core, to her belly, to her heart. Still, each day she would leave that room and hobble to the godswood where she would sit at the feet of the weirwood, still blood red against the snow, pray that Ramsey would not get her with child. Because she knew that if she had a babe with the ice blue eyes of its father (and its grandfather, whose eyes were so similar and just as cold) that she would kill it and likely herself. She would rather die than bring another monster into the world.

But even with Arya here, even after the time that has passed, even as the Lady of Winterfell, she cannot open the door to that room.

* * *

 

 Then Jon returns, having beaten back the winter, and with him comes the promise of spring. He must ride South. He promised the Dragon Queen that he would help her with her war if she aided him with his. So now that the true threat is behind him, Jon must play his role in the squabbles of Southorn lords over an iron seat. She wishes that he would stay, but he tells her that he has given an oath and she doesn’t remind him that he has broken oaths before.

“It is not wise for Stark men to ride South,” she reminds him.

“Lucky, then, that I’m not a Stark,” he says, and the corners of his mouth quirk up into a smile. “At least not the way I always thought.”

“You’re still a Stark,” she tells him. “The blood of the North is in your veins. You don’t belong in the South.”

He insists on going. But he told the Dragon Queen that there is something that he must do first, so she has granted him a reprieve while she plots her next move against the Lannisters. She will call for him soon, and when she does, Jon will leave.

In the meantime, they walk the grounds of Winterfell together.

“It is good to see the snow melting,” he says to her.

“The snow saved me,” she says. “If it had not been so deep, I might have died when I escaped.”

He stops and reaches out to touch her cheek, his greys eyes kind and gentle and somber. “You no longer need to be saved. You no longer need to escape. That time is behind us.”

“I know,” she says.

And to prove it to herself she takes his hand and leads him to the door to that room. With her one hand she holds his tightly (she no longer shudders away from his touch but grasps onto him like a woman drowning) as she places her other on the door.

“You don’t need to do this,” he says.

“Yes. I do.” And she opens the door.

The room is how she remembers it. But different. Servants have been in here and they have removed Ramsey’s things. But he still remains, and she feels a tightness that begins in her belly and then clutches her heart. She trembles and tears seep unbidden from her eyes and she feels herself begin to crumple.

But Jon is there and he holds her up. And her fingers twist into the rough fabric of his cloak as he murmurs gently, lightly to her (Jon is always light and gentle and kind with her). “He is gone. He is gone. He can’t hurt you again,” he says over and over and over again into her hair as she sobs.

She is unsure how much time has passed, but when she is ready (Jon doesn’t rush her, he is light and gentle and kind and he gives her the times she need) she stands on her own and faces the room. And Jon is right because Ramsey is gone. He can’t hurt her again. She saw to that, when she let the other creatures he had abused rip him open (the way that he had ripped her open). This room is just a room, and it will always be painful for her to be in this place again (because the pain of what Ramsey did to her will never fully leave her), but she will not be afraid of it.

Ramsey is gone and Joffery is gone and Lord Baelish is gone. They are all dead; she watched them die (and two she killed herself). And she is alive. This room hold no new horrors for her, only the ghosts of what she has endured. They will continue to haunt her, she knows, but they cannot cause fresh pain.

* * *

 

She is beautiful as she walks through the godswood, down a row of twinkling lanterns and Northern Lords. She wears white and her skin is pale and her auburn hair like the red leaves of the weirwood. 

When they had announced their betrothal, she had heard some of the lords grumble that Jon could have made a more advantageous match. Some rumors even suggested that the Dragon Queen would wed him if Jon proposed the union. She had asked Jon about his prospects, but he had dismissed the suggestion. It was right that the King in the North should wed the Lady of Winterfell. The blood of the North ran through his veins, he said, his place, his heart was here at Winterfell. His place, his heart was here with her.

She wears white and her skin is pale and her auburn hair like the red leaves of the weirwood. But this time the wood is not just red and white, as green has begun to peak through the melting snow. And this time, she is not afraid, because the man who waits for her and will take her as his lady wife is good and kind and light, a good man who will make a good lord husband. A man who will help her to banish the bitter ghosts of winter as they dream together of the spring.

* * *

Jon is gone again. The Dragon Queen called and he went and he is now fighting in the Southorn war. But he will back, Sansa knows that he must and believes that he will.

As she walks past the door to that room, she does not notice it. It is no different than the other doors in the long corridors of the castle, and she walks quickly past it, without sparing it a second glance. Let the ghosts of her past haunt that place, she thinks, as she looks to her future. 

The godswood is stirring. Green grasses poke through the snow and buds emerge on the trees. She sits beneath the red leaves of the weirwood and prays for Jon’s safe return to her and his child, growing in her womb, who she hopes will have the light, kind, grey eyes of his father.

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
